Well, my gaydar works REALLY well!

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

Long story short: a woman I went to college with got back in touch with me recently and we caught up a bit. A couple of years after graduation, she met this guy who was HARD CORE fundamentalist Christian and was just smitten with him. She stopped acting like herself, started talking down to us for doing things she used to consider fun, etc.

Shortly before we lost touch (for obvious reasons) we all met her future husband. Well, let me tell you, my gaydar went off like a five-alarm fire. My GOD, how could she not tell? EVERY single one of us who met him said "Yep, he's gay. And he's fighting it SO hard."

So they got married, we lost touch, they had six kids.

When she contacted me again recently, she told me they are divorced and he is living with his new "life partner" in Houston. And he's left their church, which he was a pastor in.

Part of me feels sorry for him, trying so hard to be something he wasn't. But part of me isn't. He was SO damn mean and we even thought he was emotionally abusive to her. When they were dating, he told her she couldn't ever use tampons again, because they were sinful. And she wasn't a virgin, but he insisted she spiritually become "re-virginized" again. Crazy stuff.

Anyway, she seems much happier and much more normal now. Just out of curiosity, I brought up politics and she said back when she was in their church (she has left, too) they used to tell them how to vote and it was always "Bob Dole" or "George Bush." I asked her, "so did you vote for bush this time?" and she said "HELL no, he's a total asshole."

There IS hope for some people. And I'm glad to know they are both happier now. She said his partner's name is Rick and Rick adores the kids. All's well that ends well.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I feel sorry for the kids

they must've had a rough time, being raised with fundamentalist hate and intolerance and then finding out the truth about things. Hope they are coping with it all and that they have learned to be tolerant and open.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

5. You know,

I hardly thought about the effect it all had on them. Shame on me. I bet it's been hard, but hopefully this will be less confusing and more.......I don't know, life-affirming for them. She seems to really have her head on straight now. Said she's been in counseling for two years.

[JimmyJazz]

2. Wow that's some story. I worked with a man who was married

and obviously gay. What a struggle that must be.

BTW - just out of curiosity, how does one become "re-virginized?"

:hi:

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

3. You have to pray a lot

and not have sex for a long time and not use tampons, apparently.

[JimmyJazz]

12. That's Bullshit.

Wow. Fantasyland is a lovely place, isn't it?

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

15. Ok want to hear a funny story about this guy?

About six months after they started dating, when we really knew how freaky with the religion he was, we tacked up a big ol' Chippendale's Dancer poster in the kitchen over the sink. Hey we were all girls and he made doing the dishes SO worth it!

Well, her boyfriend saw it and RIPPED it down from the wall and tore it to bits right in front of us. We were just shocked. We didn't think he'd do THAT. He looked at us with TEARS in his eyes and said he'd pray for us. Then he started to leave and barked at our friend to come with him, that they had to PRAY and RIGHT NOW.

(Looking back, I think the Chippendale's poster caused a reaction in him he did NOT like.)

[sleepyhead]

22. Re-virginization!

There was an article today in the newspaper about plastic surgeons who are doing a booming business in hymen replacement. I had heard of that being done on rare occasions for (I think) Muslim women who would've been killed by their husbands or relatives if they didn't bleed on their wedding night, but the procedure has now apparently gone mainstream. Yikes!

[BoX o BooX]

4. Happiness abounds.

I met the woman of my dreams when I was 19 and she was 18. We married a few months later. To this day, she's the best person I've known.

Almost 20 years later, she's been with her wife for over ten years. I was invited to their wedding, and I was pleased and proud to accept the invitation.

Life is a continuum; it's folly to think we are frozen in time and character.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

6. You're a great guy

Box. Good for you and good for them. Did you have kids? Are you remarried? Sorry to be nosy. I love stories with happy endings!

[BoX o BooX]

8. Thanks.

We had no children, and I never remarried. I turned seven other women into lesbians, but I think that's coincidence.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

10. Wow

damn, um, that's quite a track record you've got there. Maybe you are just SO good that you get them tuned in to their inner sexuality?

:hi:

[BoX o BooX]

14. Well, that last part is hyperbole.

I'm just happy for her, and I'm often happy for me. ;)

[Spinzonner]

18. Apparently they thought no other man could measure up to you

so they decided to switch teams.

Or so you can tell yourself :-)

[hunter]

24. Wow. I have horrible, horrible scars from a relationship like that...

...and we didn't get married. She married another woman, another friend of mine.

A few years after the inevitable crash-and-burn I was blessed to find and marry "the best person I've known."

She and her wife have two kids, and a house in the suburbs, by the beach. My wife and I have two kids and a house in the suburbs, a little further from the beach.

Everything is near wonderful for all of us. But even now, "almost 20 years later", the pain will still bubble up in me at unexpected times to make a mess of things.

I was hurt bad... really, really bad.

Gays and Lesbians need to be welcomed into our society, and their relationships honored. It's as simple as that. Don't anyone fucking dare spew their vile crap that "marriage" is only valid between a "man and a woman. If the first woman I ever loved head-over-heals, heart-and-soul, had simply been able to marry her girlfriend, this world would have been a much better place.

Instead, the three of us had to walk through bloody hell, because this fucking dark age demon infested society of the United States is full of bloody flaming shit raining down on everyone.

Well, there you have it, hunter's primal scream...

[fluffernutter]

7. I have a friend like that now.

She always talks about how great their sex life is, but her husband has GOT to be gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that ;) But she is fooling herself because he is rich.

I'm glad your friend is happier now, I wish the same for my friend someday.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

13. I really feel for homosexuals

who are married to the opposite gender. I mean, on the one hand, you can say "why did you get married in the first place?" but on the other hand, I've never walked a mile in their shoes, so who am I to say?

[foreigncorrespondent]

20. The answer to that is very simple...

...for most (excluding your friends ex fundie husband.)

"why did you get married in the first place?"

When I was in my early 20's (living my straight life) I used to hang out with my partner at a local pinball joint. Anyway, through that place we struck up a really good friendship with this woman who worked the change booth.

Anyway, after knowing her for about a month she told me that the owners were looking for another worker and she said I should apply for the job. Which I did, and which I got.

I used to work five nights a week. Four of those nights were with my friend, and the other night was with this guy. Anyway, one night during a long pretty quiet shift with my friend we got to talking about gay people. It was then she told me that her husband (who she had been married to for 15 years, and was still married to) was a gay guy. Through that marriage they had two lovely daughters.

Anyway, later on I found out that her husband was the guy I would work my Sunday night shift with.

After getting to know him a lot better, he and I sat down and talked for a while. And I asked him why he chose to marry, rather than live his life the way he was born to live it. He basically told me that when he and his wife got married (late 70's) his family had basically demanded he marry a woman to get his absurd feelings for men out of his system.

After being married for thirteen years, he couldn't stand living a lie any longer and so he told his wife. They stayed together for their two children, but began living a very private open marriage.

Unfortunately I have since lost contact with this couple, and have no idea if they are still together or anything.

I was also in a straight relationship for fifteen years. The reason I chose to live my life as a lie was because of what society expected of us. Plus I thought my family expected me to live a straight life as well.

[fluffernutter]

21. i agree.

i work with a great gay guy, and he married a woman straight out of HS. when i asked him why, he said it was because he was always given shit all his life - his whole life - because he was different, he felt different and other people picked up on it.

UNTIL he started hanging out with this girl.

then, magically, he was accepted and felt so much better. he was going to go to college, but he said the thought of going there and having to do it all over again until he found a girl to hang out with was unbearable, so he eloped after they graduated.

they didn't have kids, and he finally came clean with her because he really did care about her, and he knew it was hurting her because he wasn't attracted to her. now, she is remarried and he has had a partner for many years and is very happy.

it just breaks my heart that he actually had to go through all that just to end up happy ... finally.

[Wright Patman]

9. Don't knock being a virgin until you've tried it

eom

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

11. Tee hee.

[jonnyblitz]

16. wow. do they REALLY think that about tampons???

(slightly off topic I know but..) the reason I ask is because the fundie parody website "Landover Baptist Church" has a spoof on tampons ("Satan's Little Cotton Fingers")which I thought they made up out of nowhere. I didn't actually think this was a common belief among them. If so, how strange!! :wow:


check it out if you haven't seen it yet:

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0999/cotton.html

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

17. I've only glanced at the Landover Baptist site,

but yeah, apparently as far back as the very early 90s, fundies were thinking tampons were evil. He TOLD her she was not to use them anymore, because they were "like intercourse."

We all gasped and laughed when she told us then we said "he's not SERIOUS, is he? Does he ACTUALLY think using those things is PLEASURABLE?????"

The funny part is, I KNOW she didn't stop using them. Otherwise she would have stopped buying them, and she didn't.

[tigereye]

23. tampons are like intercourse??!!

now I have heard everything. Those folks are so sick and so repressed it is beyond my understanding. And is giving birth also bad since it involves the birth canal as well? :eyes:

Incredible. Those folks are living in the middle ages. And they want us all to go along. aaiiieeee.

[jonnyblitz]

25. . I just can't get over the tampon thing....

they are seriously searching far and wide for things to rail about.

[AngryAmish]

26. My dear mother said that "They were for married ladies."

That is what she told my sisters. She was not some evil fundy, just a sweet Irish Catholic girl.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. Attitudes about tampons

During my teaching days, a professor at another college told me that at her school, they were having a problem with tampon machines in the women's restrooms getting vandalized. Eventually they found out that the vandal was a janitor who believed that "girls shouldn't be sticking things inside themselves." :eyes:

[demodonkey]

19. I have a Freeper cousin who married the same kind of guy back in 1979...

back then all my gay friends confirmed exactly what I myself thought about the groom... but to this day neither he nor she has ever admitted it.

They ended up having 3 Freeper kids, the Freep kids are in and/or through college but messed up big-time, gay hubby now claims he's atheist, she's ultra-RW Christian, he hates her, she hates him, they lived separately for years however due to finances now are back in the same house but don't speak, she does all the cleaning ("woman's work"), he claims he's "sick" all the time, their marriage is totally FUBAR, but she will NEVER get a divorce (the "Christian" thing to do is "'til death do us part").

And this same cousin had the nerve to tell my Dem mother (who is in her 80s) that cousin is worried my mother might go to hell because she is "too liberal" and "likes gay people"...


GEEESHHHH!!! :crazy:

[bettyellen]

27. what's FUBAR?

[put out]

28. The next step from SNAFU.

Situation normal, all fucked up.

FUBAR is fucked up beyond all recognition.

Correct me, please, if I am wrong.

[NaturalHigh]

32. I thought it was "beyond all repair."

Not sure where I got that, though. Wasn't FUBAR a common phrase in "Saving Private Ryan"?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

29. Wow. What a story.

I have a long time friend, a former office mate from my military days. Dude is middle aged now. I've always been convinced the guy is totally gay (along with many of our mutual friends). He's not really effeminate or anything, it's just a lot of different things...

Anyway, I'm not the type to confront people who seem to be closet cases ("So what's the deal with you anyway?"). I always figure if they want to disclose anything they will, otherwise let it rest.

But as long as I've known this guy, he's always had to make a big deal telling me about these various women that he's going to visit or who have visited him, always long distance out of town stuff where it's someone we never meet. Always a really implausible scenario too, where the gal is much younger etc. (you'd have to know the guy, he's really not the type)

Sort of a "he doth protest too much" kind of situation. It's hard to listen to all this stuff without sighing and saying, "you know, it's really okay with me if you're gay. You really don't have to go to the trouble to make up all these stories. Just be happy doing whatever you want to do, it's all good with me, and everyone else we know for that matter."

Part of the problem is that dude was raised in a big conservative Catholic family. Also a career as a military officer where you can't be officially "out" is a problem too. But what a waste of time spending most of your life trying to pretend to be something...

[mitchum]

31. I hope that Rick is into rough sex and gets a bit carried away one night

Your friend's ex still needs some serious payback for the hell he put her through (and for passing on his stupid genes)